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Muzzey 


The  challenge  of  Socialism 


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ETHICAL         v!^^^^^^' ^t:'. 
ADDRESSES 


AND  ETHICAL  RECORD 


The  Challenge  of  Socialism 

David  Saville  Muzzey. 

A  Help  to  the  Moral  Life 

William  M.  Salter. 

Meaning  of  Membership  in  the  New  York 
Ethical  Society 


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Vol.  XV.     No.  1.     (September,  1907.) 
Funeral  Service  of  Walter  L.   Sheldon.     Words  Spoken  at 
Funerals  by  Mr.  Sheldon.     Marriage  Ceremony  by  Mr. 
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Vol.  XV.  No.  2.  (October,  1907.) 
Walter  L.  Sheldon  Memorial  Addresses.  Felix  Adler,  Wil- 
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Burns  Weston. 

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The  Character  of  the  Ethical  Movement.  Edwin  R.  A.  Sel- 
igman.  The  Need  of  a  Religion  of  Morality.  William 
M.  Salter.  The  Inspiration  of  the  Ethical  Movement. 
Nathaniel  Schmidt.  Ethics  Teaching  in  the  School. 
Henry  Moskowitz.  Mcncure  D.  Conway.  William  M. 
Salter. 

Vol.  XIV.     No.  4.     (December,  1907.) 
The  Spiritual  Greatness  of  the  Real  Jesus.    Alfred  W.  Mar- 
tin.    A  Vision  for  the  New  Year.     David  Saville  Muz- 
zey. 

Vol.  XV.     No.  5.     (January,  1908.) 
The  Good  Fight— With  a  Closing  Word.    William  M.  Salter. 
The  Value  of  Ethical  Organization.     Charles  Zueblin. 


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Is   Stock  Watering   Immoral?        John    A.    Ryan,    St.    Paul 

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Oriental  Ethics  Compared  With  Western   Systems.       Hon. 

Chester  Holcombe,  Rochester,  N.  Y. 
The  Psychology  of  Mysticism.     E.  Boutroux,  Paris. 
Motive  in  Conduct.     Charles  W.  Super,  Ohio  University. 
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hx 

81 

THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM* 

By  David  Saville  Muzzey. 

Every  civilization  is  a  compromise.  Association  in 
any  enterprise  whatever,  political  or  social,  religious  or 
secular,  international  or  parochial,  is  possible  only  by  the 
abatement  of  some  part  of  somebody's  interests  or  choice. 
The  human  will,  unchastened  by  the  salutary  attrition  of 
fellow'-wills,  is  a  tyrannous  titanic  force,  which  moves 
straight  to  its  goal,  and  grows  surer  of  its  own  infallibility 
the  longer  its  period  of  immunity.  It  ends  in  anarchy. 
Society,  which  is  the  antithesis  of  anarchy,  exists  only  by 
the  restraint  and  balance  of  the  individual  wills ;  and  the 
more  delicate  the  civilizing  influences  of  science,  letters, 
and  intercourse  have  made  the  balance,  the  more  stable 
tends  to  be  the  form  of  society  conditioned  thereby.  We 
need  not  at  all  assent  to  Rousseau's  fanciful  theory  of  the 
origin  of  human  society  in  the  deliberate,  contractual  sac- 
rifice of  the  untamed  individual  will  to  the  general  wel- 
fare, if  we  still  recognize  that  the  amelioration,  yes,  even 
the  bare  continuance  of  human  society  at  the  level  at- 
tained, does  actually  depend  on  just  such  a  sacrifice. 

Probably  not  a  decade  of  the  world's  history  nor  a 
corner  of  the  world's  surface  has  ever  been  free  from 
men  or  women  who  have  been  convinced  that  the  sacrifice 
was  vain.  Probably  for  tens  who  have  registered  their 
protest,  or  devised  a  remedy,  thousands  have  lived  in 
baffled  rebellion,  and  died  in  baffled  resignation.     Eight 


*A  lecture  given  before  the  Women's  Conference  of  the  Society 
for  Ethical  Culture  of  New  York,  and  printed  by  the  special  re- 
quest of  the  Conference. 

890169  '"' 


142  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM. 

centuries    ago   Omar    Khayyam    launched    his    impotent 
challenge : 

"Ah,  love !  could  thou  and  I  with  fate  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  scheme  of  things  entire, 
Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits- — and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  heart's  desire !" 

Twenty-three  centuries  ago  Plato  dreamed  of  a  society 
in  which  men  should  turn  from  the  black  shadow-pictures 
on  the  walls  of  their  prison  house,  and  face  sunlit  reality. 
And  for  aught  we  know,  twice  twenty-three  centuries 
before  the  ancient  records  of  clay  tablet  and  papyrus, 
men  were  compounding  panaceas  for  the  ills  of  their 
doomed  society,  or  embracing  the  mild  protest  of  monas- 
tic retirement. 

The  thoughtful  and  historical-minded  to-day  will  not 
marvel  at  the  unrest  in  our  society,  or  seek  to  drown  the 
voices  of  discontent  by  raising  in  counter-clamor  that 
most  inappropriate  word  of  all  the  world  to  raise  in 
clamor,  "Peace!  Peace!"  Each  man  and  woman  among 
us,  according  to  the  light  vouchsafed  to  each,  should 
purify  his  political  and  social  vision,  and  do  his  part  to 
purge  from  the  body  social  those  hideous  superstitions 
and  sanctioned  malefactions  whose  combined  power  has 
wrought  the  tragedy  of  history. 

We  are  face  to  face,  in  our  state  of  the  opening  twen- 
tieth century,  with  conditions  of  the  utmost  gravity.  A 
combination  of  factors,  all  good  in  themselves — unsur- 
passed wealth  of  natural  resources,  long  years  of  peace, 
miraculous  multiplication  of  labor-saving  inventions, 
space-mocking  engines  of  transportation,  giant  intellects 
of  organization,  and  giant  hands  of  direction — has  resulted 
in  a  situation  critical  in  the  extreme.    Why  ?    Because  the 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  I43 

economic  and  material  vigor  of  our  country  has  outrun 
its  political  wisdom  and  its  ethical  warnings.  Because  the 
unit  of  production  has  grown  until  it  has  not  only  burst 
the  geographical,  mechanical,  industrial  bonds  of  a  gen- 
eration ago,  but  threatens  to  shatter  the  political  and 
moral  framework  of  our  democracy  as  well.  We  read 
that  Mr.  Morgan,  beside  his  chain  of  ten  or  a  dozen  banks, 
controls  industries  capitalized  at  $4,700,000,000 — an 
amount  of  wealth  greater  than  the  total  valuation  of  the 
thirteen  American  Colonies  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution, 
greater  than  the  combined  wheat,  corn,  and  live-stock 
trade  of  our  country  to-day.  And  Mr.  Morgan  is  only  one 
— primtts  inter  pares — among  the  group  of  financial  At- 
lases on  whose  broadcloth  shoulders  this  free  government 
seems  to  rest.  These  men  have  their  emissaries  in  our 
halls  of  congress ;  their  agents  control  our  press ;  they  ap- 
pear, in  the  majestic  calm  of  the  gods  of  old,  theophanic, 
ex-machina — and,  pouring  out  a  few  tens  of  millions  like 
oil,  they  soothe  the  turbulent  waves  of  the  stock-pit ;  they 
fix  the  price  of  our  meat  and  drink,  our  clothing  and  shel- 
ter; and  to  them  our  elected  magistrates  run  to  ask  their 
favor  that  this  government  may  live ! 

To  some  robustly  optimistic  minds  this  triumph  of  in- 
dustrial concentration  is  altogether  a  good  and  wholesome 
thing.  Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  expression  of  eco- 
nomic "stand-pattism"  is  the  recent  book  of  Chancellor 
James  R.  Day,  of  Syracuse,  The  Raid  on  Prosperity. 
Chancellor  Day  deprecates  the  raid.  He  warns  a  sensa- 
tion-loving and  meddlesome  government  not  to  endanger 
the  progress  of  the  greatest  age  in  all  history.  He  scorns 
the  regulator  and  the  trust-buster.  Hear  some  of  his 
sentiments : 

"Millions  have  taken  the  place  of  hundreds  of  thousands  as  a 


144  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM. 

measure  of  wealth.  Billions  will  displace  millions  before  the  cen- 
tury closes  ....  The  man  who  is  shouting  himself  hoarse 
over  trusts  and  corporations  and  swollen  fortunes  will  take  his 
place  in  history  with  the  men  who  smashed  Arkwright's  loom  and 
Whitney's  cotton-gin,  and  the  pamphleteers  who  ridiculed  Steph- 
enson's locomotive  ....  The  poor  man  owes  more  to  cor- 
porations than  to  any  other  commercial  force  for  his  opportunity 
to  work  at  good  wages,  or  to  work  at  all,  for  that  matter.  Let 
those  who  hate  the  corporations  go  back  to  the  canal-boat,  the 
little  railway,  the  stage-coach,  and  a  dollar  a  day  wage." 

So  admiration  for  the  strong  men  who  have  thrown 
bands  of  steel  across  our  continent,  and  gathered  the  har- 
vests of  half  a  world  in  their  arms,  takes  hold  of  many  a 
mind  that  sees  in  the  protest  of  the  soberest  constitution- 
ality or  sincerest  conviction  at  best  only  the  short-sighted 
policy  of  obstruction  to  our  swelling  columns  of  exports, 
and  at  worst  the  hateful,  envious  shriek  of  confiscation 
and  class  war. 

No  less  proud  of  the  splendid  achievements  of  our  in- 
dustrial age,  but  far  less  confident  in  the  wisdom  of  the 
present  management  of  our  great  industries  is  a  large 
class  of  men,  our  President  in  the  lead,  who  look  to  gov- 
ernment regulation  as  the  panacea  for  fevered  economics. 
They  would  bring  the  trusts  to  book — the  statute-book. 
By  commissions,  investigating  committees,  federal  prose- 
cutions, enormous  penalties,  they  would  curb  the  spirit 
of  lawless  gain,  and  persuade  the  lion  of  the  Montana 
forest  to  lie  down  in  peace  beside  the  lamb  of  Wall 
Street.  To  the  robust  optimism  of  the  stand-patters  these 
apostles  of  government  regulation  seem  like  mischievous 
meddlers ;  they  destroy  confidence,  reduce  our  prestige 
in  the  eyes  of  Europe,  side-track  thousands  of  freight 
cars  within  stone's  throw  of  the  grain  and  cotton  they 
should  be  moving,  and  drive  the  already  meagre  supply 
of  currency  into  barren  vatilts,  strong-boxes,  and  stock- 
ing-toes.   To  another  class  of  critics  the  regulators  seem 


THE   CHALLENGE  OF  SOCL\LISM.  I45 

rather  stupid  than  deliberately  unwise,  in  their  hope  to 
stamp  out  the  disease  of  economic  dropsy  by  strengthen- 
ing and  protecting  all  the  evils  on  which  it  feeds — high 
tariffs,  monopolistic  franchises,  corporation  banking,  pri- 
vate ownership  of  the  sources  and  tools  of  production, 
artificial  markets,  and  all  the  manifold  ills  of  the  capital- 
istic regime.  As  well,  say  these  critics,  put  a  wooden 
dam  across  the  Mississippi  and  open  a  thousand  fresh 
springs  at  its  sources. 

So  we  have  a  third  class  of  men  who  look  with  the  ut- 
most anxiety  on  the  capitalistic  usurpation,  and  with  utter 
misgiving  on  the  power,  or  even  the  ultimate  will,  of  our 
government  as  at  present  constituted  to  dethrone  the 
usurpers.  Their  remedy  is  nothing  less  than  a  complete 
reorganization  of  society — a  new  earth.  Their  dirge  of 
warning  is  at  the  same  time  a  pean  of  thanksgiving;  for 
the  cruel  regime  which  allows  a  few  to  revel  in  wanton 
luxury  while  the  millions  are  being  pushed  closer  and 
closer  to  the  starvation  line,  is  to  be  swept  away.  The 
ballot  is  in  the  hands  of  the  oppressed.  Economic  pen- 
nilessness  will  wake  to  its  political  omnipotence.  It  will 
rise  and  assert  its  strength ;  and,  although  in  its  first  clash 
with  entrenched  capitalism  it  will  set  in  motion  a  battle 
beside  which  all  other  revolutions  of  history  will  look 
like  a  storm  in  a  glass  of  water,  and  although  for  a  while 
"the  extreme  medicine  of  state  will,"  in  Burke's  vivid 
phrase,  "become  its  daily  bread" — yet  the  end  will  be 
peace.  A  new  society,  disposing  of  its  own  boundless 
resources  for  the  good  of  all,  producing  for  use  and  not 
for  profit,  enjoying  life  instead  of  fighting  on  the  one 
side  to  sustain  it  and  on  the  other  side  to  accumulate  the 
millions  that  turn  its  enjoyment  into  the  gall  of  bitter- 
ness.    The  men  who  look  for  this  radical  transformation 


146  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM. 

of  society  are  called  Socialists,  and  the  various  programs 
by  which  they  hope  to  bring  it  to  pass,  or  according  to 
which  they  see  it  inevitably  developing,  are  called  So- 
cialism. 

No  word  in  the  English  language,  not  even  religion 
itself,  is  harder  to  define  than  socialism.  It  is  a  perfectly 
colorless  word.  According  to  its  etymology  every  man 
who  believes  in  a  society  of  human  beings — every  man, 
that  is,  above  the  lowest  savage — is  a  socialist.  Yet  per- 
haps no  other  word  has  Ao  rapidly  acquired  a  sinister 
meaning.  The  socialist  is  commonly  believed  to  be  a 
violent,  envious,  ignorant,  lazy  man,  who  prefers  to  di- 
vide up  the  wealth  others  have  accumulated  rather  than 
to  earn  his  own  living.  In  the  jingle  of  Ebenezer  Elliott, 
"the  Corn-law  Rhymer:" 

"What  is  a  Socialist?     One  who  is  willing 
To  give  up  his  penny  and  pocket  your  shilling." 

But  this  epigram  we  shall  agree,  with  a  little  reflection, 
is  quite  as  apt  to  characterize  the  capitalist.  The  unfor- 
tunate qualities  of  envy,  indolence,  and  greed  are  too 
widespread  to  be  the  distinct  property  of  any  school  or 
party.  And  it  is  to  be  feared  that  a  majority  of  those  who 
so  confidently  and  finally  announce  the  dismaying  cata- 
logue of  socialist  sins  have  never  read  or  thought  it 
worth  while  to  read  a  single  reputable  socialist  on  the 
principles  of  his  party.  Huxley  once  said  that  the  un- 
pardonable sin  of  science  was  pronouncing  opinions,  dic- 
tated by  prejudice,  on  matters  never  faithfully  studied; 
and  indeed  most  of  the  pulpit  tirades  against  that  great 
man  himself  were  from  clergymen  who  considered  it  a  sin 
to  read  and  understand  the  man  whom  they  vilified.  The 
prophets  are  generally  stoned  before  they  get  through 
their  first  few  sentences ! 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  I47 

I  am  not  here  maintaining  that  the  sociaHsts  are  the 
true  prophets  or  that  sociaHsm  is  the  inevitable  form  of 
society.  I  am  simply  maintaining  that  it  behooves  us  to 
study  very  carefully  a  movement  which  has  grown  faster 
in  the  last  generation  than  any  other  movement  in  the 
history  of  the  world,  with  the  exception  of  the  Moham- 
medan religion  in  the  years  immediately  following  the 
death  of  the  prophet.  The  socialist  vote  increased  in  the 
United  States  from  96,000  in  the  presidential  election  of 
1900  to  409,000  in  that  of  1904.  In  France  it  increased 
from  47,000  in  1887  to  1,120,000  in  1906;  in  Germany 
from  30,000  in  1887  to  3,008,000  (far  the  largest  party 
vote  in  the  Empire)  in  1903 ;  and  in  the  countries  of 
western  Europe  and  the  United  States  from  30,000  in 
1870  to  7,000,000  in  1905.  As  yet  we  do  scarcely  more 
than  rub  our  eyes  and  stare  at  these  figures.  But  they  in- 
vite us  to  read  and  ponder. 

In  the  brief  hour  at  my  disposal  I  have  planned  to  deal 
with  three  aspects  of  socialism :  the  first  historical,  to 
give  a  summary  view  of  the  course  of  socialistic  thought 
in  the  last  half  century ;  the  second  expository,  to  set  forth 
some  of  the  tenets  agreed  on  by  the  socialists  quite  gen- 
erally; and  the  third  critical,  to  indicate  what  should  be 
the  attitude  toward  the  socialist  claims  and  principles  of 
those  who,  like  us,  are  pledged  to  the  doctrine  of  the  su- 
preme value  of  the  ethical  life. 

The  rise  of  modern  socialism  lies  within  the  memory 
of  living  men.  The  events  of  the  year  1848  gave  it  its 
impetus.  For  in  that  year  political  reaction  triumphed 
over  dawning  liberal  ideas  in  central  Europe,  and  the 
hopes  of  economic  reform  in  the  regular  course  of  middle- 
class  government  were  rudely  cast  down.  By  a  singular 
coincidence,  there  was  cast  into  the  revolutionary.on^ers  of 


148  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM, 

of  1848  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  the  world's  writ- 
ings, the  Communist  Manifesto.  The  chief  author  of  the 
Manifesto,  Karl  Marx,  was  a  powerful  genius,  trained 
in  the  study  of  history  and  philosophy,  a  cogent  writer, 
and  a  dauntless  fighter.  He  stands  as  the  founder  of 
modern  Socialism.  Before  Marx  there  had  been  plenty 
of  men,  from  Plato  downward,  who  had  dreamed  of  a 
better  society ;  plenty  who,  like  Sir  Thomas  More,  Cam- 
panella,  Harrington,  Cabet,  Mably,  and  Morelli,  had  im- 
agined Utopian  societies  on  earth,  sun,  or  moon — antici- 
pating the  modern  Utopias  of  Bellamy,  H.  G.  Wells,  and 
Anatole  France.  But  till  Marx  socialism  meant  Utopi- 
anisni.  The  Utopians  either  retired  from  society  to  form 
a  little  community  of  their  own,  or  else  made  over  so- 
ciety by  some  artificial,  mechanical  devices,  like  those  of 
Bellamy's  Looking  Backivard.  Their  ideal  state  was  not 
only  actually  opposed  to  the  present  world,  but  it  was  also 
fundamentally  antagonistic  to  it.  Utopianism  could  not 
be  derived  from  the  present  world  by  any  natural  devel- 
opment. It  was  cataclysmic.  Marx,  on  the  other  hand, 
laid  at  the  foundation  of  his  socialism  (which  he  called 
couimiinism  to  avoid  the  Utopian  implications  in  the 
word  socialism)  a  philosophy  of  history.  He  said  not, 
this  is  what  we  should  like  to  make  society,  but,  this  is 
what  is  actually  happening  in  society.  Marxian  socialism 
was  natural  not  artificial,  a  growth  from  within  not  a 
force  from  without,  an  evolution  not  a  cataclysm,  scien- 
tific not  visionary. 

Marx  declared  that  "in  every  historic  epoch  the  pre- 
vailing mode  of  economic  production  and  exchange,  and 
the  social  organization  necessarily  following  from  it,  form 
the  basis  on  which  is  built  up  and  from  which  alone  can 
'■-'ed  the  political  and  intellectual  history  of  that 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  I49 

epoch."  The  present  bourgeoisie  or  middle-class  had  ef- 
fected, he  declared,  a  great  world  revolution  in  the  four- 
teenth and  fifteenth  centuries,  by  overthrowing  feudalism, 
but  they  had  now  created  a  proletariat,  a  wage-oppressed, 
expropriated  fourth  estate,  which  would  soon  swamp  the 
bourgeoisie  themselves.  They  had  collected  the  masses 
in  great  towns  by  their  centralization  of  industry ;  they 
had  kept  the  course  of  industry  in  perpetual  flux  by  rapid 
successive  transformations  of  the  instruments  and  pro- 
cesses of  production,  and  by  continual  recurrences  of 
commercial  crises ;  they  had  reduced  the  yeomanry  and 
small  tradesmen  and  artisans  to  a  proletariat,  and  were 
making  the  life  of  the  proletariat  one  of  privation,  un- 
certainty, discontent,  and  incipient  revolution.  "They 
treated  the  laborer  like  a  ware,  buying  him  in  the  cheap- 
est market  for  the  cost  of  his  production  (the  bare  cost 
of  his  living),  and  taking  from  him  the  whole  surplus 
value  of  his  work,  after  deducting  the  value  of  his  sub- 
sistence." We  do  not  seek  to  destroy  the  state,  cried 
Marx,  but  only  the  capitalistic  government  of  the  state. 
We  do  not  wish  to  abolish  property,  but  rather  that  sys- 
tem under  which  property  is  nozv  abolished  for  nine- 
tenths  of  society.  We  do  not  advocate  the  destruction  of 
the  family,  but  rather  the  restitution  of  the  family  now 
destroyed  by  a  regime  which  makes  a  slave  of  the  father, 
and  takes  the  mother  for  the  factory  and  the  child  for  the 
mill,  to  make  up  good  measure  for  the  capitalist's  profits. 
We  demand  that  all  who  are  able  shall  labor,  that  landed 
property  be  expropriated,  that  inheritances  be  abolished, 
that  the  state  control  means  of  transportation,  that  na- 
tional factories  be  established,  that  child-labor  cease,  and 
that  education  be  public,  compulsory,  and  gratuitous. 
Marx  concludes  with  a  ringing  appeal  to  the  workers  of 


150  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM. 

all  lands :  "The  proletariat  have  nothing  to  lose  but  their 
chains !  They  have  a  world  to  win !  Proletarians  of  all 
nations,  unite !" 

Cicero  said  that  Socrates  "brought  philosophy  from 
heaven  to  earth,"  that  is,  from  its  vain  speculations  on  the 
nature  of  science  (without  experimentation),  and  clever 
dialectics  on  the  nature  of  justice  (without  principles), 
to  a  reasoned  study  of  the  human  mind  and  its  powers. 
So,  we  might  say,  Marx  brought  socialism  from  heaven 
to  earth — out  of  the  clouds  of  imaginary  Utopias  into  the 
everyday  atmosphere  of  politics  and  economics.  Although 
earlier  socialists,  notably  St.  Simon,  had  in  the  first  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  anticipated  some  of  the  Marx- 
ian positions,  such  as  the  essential  antagonism  of  the  ap- 
propriating and  the  expropriated  classes,  nevertheless  it 
was  Marx  who  first  clearly  and  forcibly  divorced  social- 
ism from  its  Utopian  implications  and  complications.  I 
would  call  your  attention  to  four  features  of  the  Marxian 
doctrine  which  have  characterized  most  of  the  socialistic 
thought  to  our  own  day,  and  which  consequently  entitle 
Marx  to  be  called  the  founder  of  modern  socialism. 

First,  Marx  gave  socialism  a  philosophical  basis  in 
history.  He  showed  his  doctrine  to  be  an  inevitable  stage 
in  a  great  evolutionary  process.  As  a  student  and  de- 
voted follower  of  Hegel,  Marx  adopted  the  theory  of  the 
unfolding  of  the  consciousness  of  freedom  (Hegel's 
Freiheitsbemusstsein)  through  the  successive  hamionies 
of  opposites.  Critics  of  Marx  soon  pointed  out  that  he 
allowed  his  Hegelianism  to  sharpen  the  actual  conflict  be- 
tween the  classes  to  too  fine  a  point,  but  his  general  thesis 
of  the  evolutionary  significance  of  socialism,  as  against 
the  cataclysmic  Utopian  view,  they  adopted. 

A  second  feature  of  Marxian  socialism  is  its  interna- 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM,  I5I 

tional  character.  The  Utopias  were  all  exclusive  groups 
of  the  elect.  Marx  appealed  to  the  workers  of  all  na- 
tions. The  Communistic  League,  which  he  and  Engels 
founded,  became  a  few  years  later  the  International 
Workingmen's  Association.  The  International  was  dis- 
credited and  disrupted  by  its  revolutionary  exercises  at 
the  time  of  the  Paris  Commune  (1871),  and  socialism 
drew  for  a  while  into  a  nationalistic  phase.  But  the  hol- 
lowness  of  Bismarck's  imitation  of  state  socialism  in 
Prussia,  the  combined  hostility  of  state,  church,  and  army 
in  France,  the  progressive  dampening  of  political  aspira- 
tions among  the  radicals  of  almost  all  the  European  coun- 
tries, have  led  the  socialists  back  to  the  international  plat- 
form advocated  by  Marx,  until  at  the  recent  congress  held 
at  Stuttgart  it  was  even  demanded  by  some  of  the  dele- 
gates (notably  the  French)  that  socialists  should  refuse 
to  bear  arms  for  the  fatherland  against  their  comrades 
of  foreign  nations. 

A  third  feature  of  Marx's  socialism  is  its  close  connec- 
tion with  the  working  people.  Marx  made  socialism  a 
program  for  the  proletariat,  whereas  it  had  been  a  pastime 
for  the  dreamer.  Any  man  with  a  reforming  or  protest- 
ing interest;  any  radical  dissatisfied  with  church  or  state 
or  society  in  general  was  a  "socialist."  He  might  be 
laboring  to  establish  Apostolic  Christianity  or  to  abolish 
God,  to  house  all  the  workers  in  model  tenements  holding 
two  thousand  each,  or  to  have  a  religious  test  introduced 
into  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Marx  called 
on  the  proletariat  to  wake  to  their  cause  and  fight  their 
own  battle.  He  bade  them  be  the  chief  actors  in  the  drama 
of  social  regeneration,  instead  of  the  passive  recipients  of 
the  blessings  planned  for  them  in  the  Utopias.  He  inter- 
preted the  worn  phrase,  "dignity  of  labor"  as  a  prophetic 


152  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCL\LISM. 

motto,  pointing  to  a  time  when  the  laborer  should  enjoy 
the  only  dignity  possible — the  dignity  of  freedom. 

And  finally,  Marx  made  socialism  a  political  affair. 
To  be  sure,  in  his  day  the  ballot  was  as  generally  denied 
to  the  proletarian  as  it  is  granted  to  him  to-day.  By 
the  circumstances  of  the  time,  then,  Marx  was  unable  to 
make  his  appeal,  as  present-dav  socialists  do,  to  the 
working  class  at  the  polls.  Agitation  had  to  take  the 
place  of  the  ballot  in  his  scheme,  and  therefore  his  social- 
ism has  a  more  revolutionary  aspect  than  it  would  prob- 
ably have,  had  Marx  lived  in  these  days  when  the  ballot 
is  in  the  hands  of  the  workingmen.  But  while  the  ballot 
does  not  figure  in  Marx's  Manifesto,  still  he  is  the  father 
of  political  socialism  by  virtue  of  his  clear  development 
of  that  class-consciousness  which  makes  the  socialist  cast 
his  ballot  as  a  party  man  to-day. 

This  four-fold  nature,  then,  of  the  Marxian  type  of  so- 
cialism— an  inevitable,  historic,  evolutionary,  class-con- 
scious movement  of  the  proletariat  of  all  nations  to  gain 
for  themselves  through  political  agitation  their  emanci- 
pation from  economic  oppression — characterizes  it  as  the 
fountain-head  of  all  socialistic  theory  and  the  germ-cell 
of  all  socialistic  growth  during  the  last  half  century. 

Into  the  details  of  that  growth  in  America  and  the  va- 
rious countries  of  Europe  (some  statistics  of  which  I  no- 
ticed a  few  moments  ago)  we  cannot  obviously  go  in  this 
hour.  In  general  it  may  be  remarked  that  while  the  pro- 
gress of  democracy  may  have  tended  to  relieve  that  ex- 
treme tension  between  the  ruling  and  the  governed 
classes,  which  Marx  experienced  in  the  midst  of  the  reac- 
tionary wave  of  the  year  1848,  still  the  industrial  concen- 
tration, the  monopolization  of  the  means  of  production  in 
the  hands  of  a  few,  the  power  of  the  capitalist  to  reduce 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  I53 

the  wage-earner  to  virtual  slavery,  has  become  accentu- 
ated in  our  day,  rather  than  diminished. 

Pari  passu  with  the  growth  of  socialism  has  gone  the 
development  of  the  trade  unions.  Trade  unionists  and 
socialists  have  quite  often  been  identified,  or  at  least 
greatly  confused  with  each  other.  The  trade  union  is 
very  much  older  than  Marxian  socialism.  And,  until  in 
very  recent  times  the  distinction  between  skilled  and  un- 
skilled labor  has  been  almost  obliterated  by  the  develop- 
ment of  machinery,  the  trade  union  was  rather  a  conser- 
vative than  a  radical  force.  It  faced  the  masses  rather 
than  the  employers.  Its  object  was  to  keep  out  the  swarm 
of  unskilled  laborers  who  were  pressing  for  admission 
into  the  trades,  and  whose  entrance  would  cause  wages  to 
drop.  The  long  apprenticeship  is  a  thing  of  the  past.  In- 
dustrial schools  teach  thousands  rapidly  to  handle  the 
tools  of  modern  machinery,  which  are  fed  by  the  workers 
of  the  lower  grades  of  intelligence.  The  trade  union 
has  no  longer  much  to  fear  from  socialism,  and  all  mod- 
ern signs  point  to  a  rapprocheuient  between  the  two, 
Large  numbers  of  socialists  are  anxious  for  the  consoli- 
dation of  interests.  Vaudervelde,  the  veteran  Belgian 
socialist,  said  at  the  Stuttgart  Congress :  "The  increase  in 
the  efficiency  of  the  trade  unions  is  of  infinitely  higher 
significance  for  the  working  class  than  the  capture  of  a 
few  seats  in  Parliament."  To  be  sure,  at  the  meeting  of 
November  15th,  at  Jamestown,  of  the  American  Federa- 
tion of  Labor,  the  delegates  voted  three  to  one  against 
government  ownership  of  railroads  and  mines.  But  that 
was  rather  from  a  divergence  in  view  as  to  the  best 
method  of  securing  the  due  recognition  of  the  rights  of 
labor  than  from  any  hostility  to  the  socialists.  The 
trade  unionists  still  doubt  the  efficacy  of  public  owner- 


154  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM, 

ship,  as  against  the  general  strike ;  but  they  are  begin- 
ning to  reaHze  that  the  strike  becomes  ineffective  in  pro- 
portion as  the  trade  is  democratized,  and  that  scabs  and 
strike-breakers  are  likely  to  be  more  willing  to  thwart 
the  strike  in  proportion  as  they  are  more  numerous  and 
more  able  to  do  so.  Perhaps  the  alternative  will  be  pre- 
sented to  the  unions  of  quietly  joining  the  socialists  in 
political  action  for  economic  reform,  or  of  openly  pro- 
claiming themselves  the  armed  guardians  of  the  portals 
of  their  trade. 

Of  the  movements  more  or  less  allied  with  Marxian 
socialism — of  Fabianism,  with  its  forensic  interest  and  its 
municipal  activities,  of  the  socialism  of  the  chair,  the 
economic  speculations  of  college  professors,  of  christian 
socialism  and  the  brotherhoods  and  societies  of  semi- 
religious,  semi-economic  aim — there  is  not  time  to  speak 
now.  We  must  pass  to  the  second  aspect  of  our  subject, 
namely,  a  brief  exposition  of  some  of  the  leading  tenets 
of  socialism. 

With  its  fundamental  Marxian  doctrine  that  all  forms 
of  political  and  social  life  are  determined  by  economic 
factors,  socialism  naturally  makes  a  revolution  in  eco- 
nomic conditions  its  first  demand.  The  natural  sources  of 
wealth  and  the  machinery  of  production  must  be  "re- 
turned" to  the  people,  in  order  that  those  who  labor  may 
fully  enjoy  the  fruits  of  their  labor.  Ownership  and  use 
must  be  joined.  Production  for  the  sake  of  profit-mak- 
ing, with  all  its  unnatural  stimulation  of  markets,  even  to 
waging  unholy  wars  in  distant  lands,  must  give  place  to 
production  for  need  in  consumption.  The  whole  capital- 
istic system  of  rent,  interest,  and  profit  is  an  incubus  on 
society.  By  it  the  past  weighs  on  the  present  like  a 
mountain.    In  our  bourgeois  society  the  labor  of  the  liv- 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  155 

ing  goes  to  augment  the  vast  masses  of  capital  already  ac- 
cumulated by  the  labor  of  the  dead,  instead  of  the  labor 
of  past  generations  being  as  it  should  a  means  of  enlarg- 
ing, enriching,  stimulating  the  life  of  the  present  gener- 
ation. The  earth  and  its  fulness  belongs  to  the  living. 
But  our  labor  is  sold  before  we  are  born,  our  lives  are 
mortgaged,  enfoeffed  to  the  lords  of  capitalism,  before 
we  came  into  the  world ;  our  strength  is  a  tribute  paid  to 
the  cunning  masters  of  past  ages ;  our  seven  youths  and 
seven  maidens  are  devoured  yearly  by  the  Minotaur  of 
mammon  in  the  labyrinth  of  mine  and  mill.  Nay,  the  la- 
borer is  doubly  a  serf ;  he  not  only  works  at  another's  bid- 
ding and  pleasure,  but  he  works  blindly  too — to  ends  that 
he  has  not  conceived,  through  means  that  he  does  not 
control.  Insensibly  he  has  been  deprived  of  the  interest 
in  his  work,  and  left  only  with  its  drudgery  and  monot- 
ony. Gradually  the  manipulation  of  his  products  has  been 
taken  from  him,  while  the  penalty  for  their  miscarriage 
has  remained.  The  meat  industry  has  been  divorced  from 
the  ranch  and  put  into  the  hands  of  the  packers  ;  the  cream 
and  butter  industry  has  been  separated  from  the  dairy 
and  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  middlemen ;  the  grain 
crop  has  been  taken  from  the  farmer  and  delivered  over 
to  the  great  elevators  and  railroad  corporations ! 

Such  is  the  impassioned  cry  of  the  socialist.  His  pro- 
gram is  more  than  a  theory ;  it  is  a  religion.  Redemption 
is  his  creed — the  redemption  of  the  earth,  which  lieth 
under  the  bondage  of  accumulated  capital. 

By  just  what  means  political,  educational,  legal,  indus- 
trial, this  redemption  is  to  be  accomplished  the  socialists 
are,  of  course,  not  agreed.  When  were  the  apostles  of 
the  world's  redemption  ever  agreed  on  means?  When 
did  creeds,  christian  or  pagan,  ever  show  unity?     For 


156  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCL^LISM. 

some  socialists  entrance  into  the  councils  of  state  has 
been  the  way  of  promise ;  for  others  parliaments  have 
been  "the  marsh  in  which  socialist  energies  are  hopelessly 
engulfed."  Many  welcome  any  measures  of  government 
which  look  to  the  reform  of  capitalistic  tyranny,  while 
more  "fear  the  Greeks  even  bearing  gifts,"  and  repudiate 
any  concurrence  with  bourgeois  politics  as  a  surrender  of 
principle.  Some  find  the  agrarian  problem  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  whole  question,  others  see  it  primarily  as  a 
problem  of  production  and  distribution,  others  still  as  a 
question  of  consistent  democracy,  a  desideratum  of  ethics, 
or  religion  pure  and  undefiled.  But  in  all  the  declara- 
tions of  the  socialist  party,  in  America  or  Europe,  that 
have  come  within  my  reading,  although  there  is  ample 
profession  of  a  revolutionary  aim  (that  is,  the  changing 
of  the  government  into  other  hands),  I  have  never  seen 
advocated  the  doctrines  which  many  respectable  oppo- 
nents charge  to  the  account  of  socialism — anarchy,  athe- 
ism, confiscation,  free-love.  That  these  things  are  direct 
corollaries  of  the  socialist  program  many  of  their  oppo- 
nents believe.  It  is  for  them  to  labor  to  substantiate  such 
belief  by  convincing  argument  and  example. 

The  anarchists  say,  No  government,  for  governments 
oppress  us  by  taxes — ^but  the  socialists  of  Germany  ex- 
pelled the  anarchists  from  their  ranks  in  the  Erfurt  Con- 
gress of  1 891.  Their  example  was  followed  by  the  Aus- 
trians  and  the  Italians  in  1892,  and  by  the  International 
Socialist  Congress  of  London  in  1896.  Said  Liebknecht, 
one  of  the  acknowledged  leaders  of  German  socialism : 
"The  anarchists  of  Europe  could  be  put  into  a  couple  of 
police  wagons.  With  their  ridiculous  revolutionary 
phrases,  their  senseless  assassinations,  and  their  stupidi- 
ties generally,  they  have  done  nothing  for  the  laboring 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  157 

classes,  but  have  worked  into  the  hands  of  their  adver- 
saries," Undoubtedly  many  socialists  are  atheists,  as 
are  many  capitalists.  Atheism  is  not  a  plank  in  the  so- 
cialist programs,  however.  They  have  constantly  de- 
clared religion  to  be  a  private  matter  with  which  they  did 
not  meddle.  Any  student  of  the  movement  has  a  perfect 
right  to  say,  if  such  be  his  conclusions  after  fair  study, 
that  socialism  must  inevitably  lead  to  the  destruction  of 
state,  family,  business,  and  character ;  but  he  has  no  right 
to  say  that  the  socialists  propose  to  destroy  any  of  these 
things.  Indeed,  the  Socialists  propose  and  claim  to  save 
all  these  things,  and  to  be  the  only  force  that  can  save 
them  all,  from  sure  destruction.  We  may  flout  the  sanity 
of  their  claim ;  we  cannot  deny  its  sincerity.  And  we  may 
well  ponder  which  is  the  wiser  and  safer  attitude,  that  of 
the  socialists  who  say.  Behold  this  instant  danger  of  de- 
struction at  the  hands  of  capitalism;  let  us  up  and  meet 
it  now !  or  that  of  their  opponent.  Prof.  Theodore  D. 
Woolsey,  of  Yale,  who  says :  "If  unfettered  freedom  can 
bring  about  a  state  of  things  in  which  a  few  great  mer- 
chants, manufacturers,  ship-owners,  transporters,  money- 
lenders can  absorb  the  capital  of  the  country,  it  will  then 
be  time  to  rectify  the  evil,  if  it  can  be  done,  by  appropri- 
ate legislation." 

I  have  tried  to  state  the  main  thesis  of  socialism,  in  this 
brief  time  at  my  disposal,  and  I  wish  your  indulgence  for 
a  few  minutes  longer,  in  which  I  may  suggest  something 
of  the  attitude  of  mind  which  it  is  fitting  for  us  to  take 
toward  this  movement.  That  there  is  room  for  the  wid- 
est difference  of  honest  opinion  on  the  subject,  I  would 
be  the  last  to  deny.  Herbert  Spencer,  a  life-long  student 
of  social  conditions,  wrote  only  a  few  days  before  his 
death  (October,  1905)  :  "Socialism  will  triumph     .     .     ., 


158  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM. 

and  it  will  be  the  greatest  disaster  the  world  has  ever 
witnessed."  William  Morris,  on  the  contrary,  as  con- 
fident of  the  triumph  of  socialism,  hailed  "the  wonderful 
day  a-coming-,  when  all  shall  be  better  than  well."  But 
whether  we  judge  socialism  favorably  or  unfavorably, 
it  is  of  the  first  importance  that  we  treat  it  fairly,  "on  its 
merits  and  not  in  its  spelling;"  that  we  judge  it  by  the 
writings  of  its  acknowledged  leaders — Marx,  Lassalle, 
Bernstein,  Liebknecht,  Bebel,  Vollmar,  Kautsky,  in  Ger- 
many; Vaillant,  Guesde,  Jaures,  Herve,  in  France;  Van- 
dervelde,  in  Belgium ;  Loria  and  Ferri,  in  Italy ;  Aveling, 
Morris,  Blatchford,  Webb,  Hardie,  in  England ;  Simonsj 
Kirkup,  Hillquit,  Spargo,  in  America.  Thousands  have 
a  ready  and  final  condemnation  of  socialism  on  their  lips 
who  have  not  read  a  single  one  of  these  authors,  and 
whose  only  information  on  the  subject  is  the  repetition 
of  a  neighbor's  repetition  of  some  venomous  editorial  on 
socialism  in  the  columns  of  a  newspaper  whose  every  ut- 
terance, except  the  weather  prediction,  is  governed  by  a 
party  in  Wall  Street.  The  ethical  judgment  is  first  of 
all  a  judgment  from  sufficient  information. 

Again,  as  we  insist  on  fair-mindedness  in  judging  the 
validity  of  the  socialist  theories,  we  must  insist  on  fair 
play  in  the  agitation  for  the  socialist  program.  Violence, 
in  a  country  of  law,  where  the  will  of  the  people  has 
chance  to  express  itself  in  due  forms  of  legislation,  we 
unhesitatingly  condemn.  Demagoguism,  the  appeal  to 
the  base  passions  of  envy,  hate,  and  greed,  we  reject  as  a 
wicked  and  stultifying  practice.  We  are  jealous,  too,  of 
the  rights  of  quality.  Merit  must  not  be  confused  with 
demerit,  industry  with  indolence,  thrift  with  shiftlessness, 
mental  endowment  with  mediocrity  or  dullness.  The 
largest  freedom  compatible  with  the  health  and  service- 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  I59 

ableness  of  society  must  be  preserved,  our  varied  tastes, 
gifts,  callings  must  be  encouraged  and  enriched,  not  sup- 
pressed or  levelled.  We  shall  examine  the  program  and 
the  practices  of  socialism,  then,  if  v^e  are  lovers  of  fair 
play,  to  see  whether  they  support  us  in  these  demands  and 
condemnations,  and  if  they  do  not,  we  shall  reject,  and 
know  why  zve  reject,  the  doctrines  of  socialism. 

Further,  it  is  our  duty  to  discover  and  rebuke,  all  clap- 
trap methods  of  reform,  all  rosily  advertised  panaceas, 
all  undigested  schemes  of  ushering  in  the  millennium 
Prof.  Simon  Patten,  of  Pennsylvania,  has  given  us  a  re- 
markable little  book  in  the  last  year  entitled,  A  New 
Basis  of  Civilization.  He  reminds  us  of  the  long  way  by 
which  we  have  come  to  our  present  eminence — and  mis- 
ery. He  tells  us  that  we  are  still  in  thought  and  instinct 
the  children  of  the  men  whose  life  depended  on  their 
neighbor's  death,  whose  wealth  depended  on  their  neigh- 
bor's poverty,  whose  pleasure  depended  on  their  neigh- 
bor's pain.  The  cruel  competitive  habits  of  that  pain 
economy  in  which  there  was  not  enough  fruit  of  man's  in- 
dustry to  supply  all,  have  been  carried  over  as  deleterious 
survivals  into  our  age  of  a  surplus  economy,  in  which 
there  is  more  than  enough  for  all,  were  it  rightly  produced 
and  rightly  apportioned.  He  warns  us  to  beware  of 
believing  too  readily  that  the  "weight  of  centuries"  would 
drop  from  the  back  of  "the  man  with  the  hoe,"  if  only  the 
implement  in  his  hands  were  his  own  or  if  he  had  not 
rent  to  pay  for  his  stony  quarter  acre.  "He  comes  to  us 
from  yesterday's  wrongs,  and  generates  beings  who  are 
carrying  into  to-morrow  the  birth-marks  of  to-day's 
evils."  In  the  light  of  such  words  we  shall  ask,  then, 
very  seriously  whether  competition  is  the  life  and  health 
of  society,  as  Benjamin  Kidd  maintains,  or  only  a  most 


l6o  THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM. 

pernicious  survival  and  dismal  delusion ;  whether  we  are 
not  to  be  ready  in  this  twentieth  century  to  welcome 
"mutual  aid  as  a  factor  in  evolution"  (to  adopt  Prince 
Kropatkin's  phrase)  and  agree  that  co-operation  works  in 
higher  spheres  of  human  development  than  competition ; 
whether  we  shall  not  confess  that  mankind  is  ready  now 
to  trust  the  appeal  of  service  to  the  various  causes  of  art, 
letters,  industry,  medicine,  education,  to  stimulate  in  him 
his  best  endeavor,  in  place  of  the  eternally  reiterated  call 
of  the  dollar;  whether  men  and  women  will  not  now  at 
least  miake  a  beginning  of  transferring  their  satisfaction 
from  the  enjoyment  of  things  which  they  have  in  excess 
of  or  to  the  exclusion  of  their  fellows,  to  things  which 
they  may  share  in  common  with  their  fellows.  To  all 
these  vital  questions  the  challenge  of  socialism  should 
rouse  us. 

But  most  significant  of  all  the  features  of  the  ethical 
attitude  toward  socialism  should  be  a  readiness  to  believe 
that  a  new  society  is  a  possible  consummation ;  that  forms 
of  political  and  economic  structure  are  not  fixed  but  fluid ; 
that  we  are  still  in  process  of  achieving  intellectual  free- 
dom, moral  responsibility,  and  social  brotherhood.  The 
men  of  a  century  ago,  the  men  of  '76  in  America  and  the 
men  of  '89  in  France,  had  a  lively  faith  in  their  power  to 
transform  a  society  oppressed  in  law  and  old  in  abuse. 
It  often  seems  to  me  that  we  have  lost  some  of  that  vigor 
of  political  protest,  and  transferred  all  our  faith  to  the 
increase  of  material  wonders.  We  are  not  much  sur- 
prised at  any  number  of  figures  in  our  statistics  of  crops 
and  commerce.  We  accept  the  Mauretania  as  a  prophesy 
of  what  will  come  shortly  in  ship-building.  But  we  ar^ 
hopelessly  astounded  before  the  proposal  of  a  new  form  of 
society.    The  draft  of  a  new  state  is  a  marvelous  thing 


THE  CHALLENGE  OF  SOCIALISM.  l6l 

in  the  eye  of  our  modern  Solons.  Yet  when  did  mammon 
ever  set  his  rainbow  in  the  sky  in  token  that  the  capi- 
talistic regime  should  not  go  the  way  of  the  feudalism 
which  it  outflooded ! 

In  these  last  days,  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
civilization,  mankind  has  reached  a  point  of  efficiency 
w^here  the  means  of  satisfying  his  needs  are  far  in  excess 
of  the  needs  themselves — yet  millions  of  human  beings 
pass  their  lives  in  toil,  misery,  and  want.  We  have  dis- 
covered the  secrets  of  earth  and  air ;  we  have  made  the 
rocks,  the  waves,  the  winds,  and  the  lightnings  the  min- 
isters of  our  wants  and  pleasures.  We  have  explored 
the  past  ages  of  man  and  sounded  the  starry  abysses  of 
the  universe.  Yet  we  have  not  taken  one  step  toward  se- 
curing that  seemingly  most  elementary  right  of  man,  the 
right  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  his  labor. 

Socialism  claims  to  secure  that  right.  Have  we  weigh- 
ed its  claim?  Have  we  cared  to  examine  the  system? 
Has  it  ever  crossed  our  minds  that  our  children's  chil- 
dren may  wonder  that  the  universal  sadness  of  a  world 
in  which  men  and  women  spent  lives  of  miserable  want 
in  the  midst  of  abounding  wealth  and  died  of  starvation 
in  sight  of  mansions  fit  for  kings,  should  have  "appealed 
to  our  transient  sympathies,  but  could  not  absorb  our 
deepest  interest?" 


A  HELP  TO  THE  MORAL  LIFE 

By  William  M.  Salter. 

The  moral  life,  to  which  in  our  better  moments  we 
aspire,  is  the  life  dominated  by  the  good  purpose.  It  is 
not  merely  one  right  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  but  one  in 
which  the  animating  thought  is  to  do  right  and  to  do  all 
that  is  right.  It  is  a  life  the  centre  of  which  is  within, 
and  in  which  hidden  things — thoughts,  feelings,  imagina- 
tions— count  as  much  as  anything  that  others  can  take  no- 
tice of,  and  more.  May  I  be  wholly  pure,  wholly  true, 
wholly  patient,  wholly  brave,  wholly  free  from  vanity  and 
pride ! — that  is  the  instinct  of  the  moral  life. 

There  may  be  various  helps  to  such  a  life,  but  one  that 
I  have  now  particularly  in  mind  would  be  a  book  that 
should  put  us  into  the  frame  of  mind  we  desire,  that 
should  serve  in  the  midst  of  our  busy  lives  to  remind  us 
of  higher  things ;  that  should  freshen  our  aspiration  and 
nerve  our  will.  Almost  every  one,  who  has  tried  the  ex- 
periment of  setting  aside  a  little  time  each  day  for  serious 
thought,  knows  how  difficult  it  is  to  concentrate  one's 
attention  without  some  external  help.  At  times  good 
thoughts  visit  us ;  at  other  times  the  soul  is  barren  and 
dry, — our  efforts  seem  like  pumping  an  empty  cistern. 
It  is,  of  course,  possible  that  our  moral  insensibility  may 
be  so  great  at  a  given  moment  that  nothing  can  break  it 
up ;  but  often  by  reading  some  chapter  or  passage  in  an 
appropriate  book  we  may  find  ourselves  passing  into  a 
serious  mood  without  effort  or  struggle.  I  should  con- 
vey a  poor  idea  of  what  I  have  in  mind,  if  it  were  thought 

^^^  THE  LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORl^IA 
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:-a^  Mn7.7.fty 

37         Challenge  of 
->i98c     socialism 


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